It isn’t often we get snow before the Shishigashira sheds its leaves. By this afternoon, the snow was gone from the trees but there were still traces on the ground, and forecasts suggesting a little more is on the way. Well, bring it on….
I wonder how many river songs there are? The other day I shared a tune called Going down to the River. Today, it’s Down the River I go (Uncle Joe) performed by Cathy Barton and Dave Para.
Do you have a favourite river tune?
How about The Texas River Song?
That one is also called Down on the Brazos or the Brazos River Song, but it isn’t the only tune that mentions the Brazos. There’s also Ain’t no more Cane on the Brazos…. here’s Lyle Lovett
Have you heard Doug Seegers?
I envy painters who can make a drawing then translate that drawing to a painting. In all the years I’ve been painting, that approach has been foreign to me. In fact I don’t make many drawings at all. For me it’s all one. When I’m on, drawing is painting, painting is thinking.
The fact is that even after all these years I feel like I’m starting at the beginning every time I go to work in the studio. It’s still a big mystery to me.
I have several paintings going in the studio right now – various smallish sizes – and I have them all over the place down there. It’s almost overwhelming to me. Some I’ve been working on for a while. Others I’ve just introduced into the mix.
I walked down there the other night and thought what the hell am I doing in here? This is, however, not unfamiliar. I often go into a group of paintings with a bunch of preconceived ideas about the next paintings, and the first thing I do is kill off all those preconceived ideas. How can you get anything done like that? I don’t know.
It’s been a couple months since we installed the Magnolia Bench, and we wanted to do a quick technical check – just to make sure all the tesserae were solidly in place and there were no issues with the grout.
I drove out for a look this morning, and it’s looking just fine.
Our Shishigashira, or Lion’s Mane Japanese Maple is one of the last trees to turn colour each year around here. Up until just a few days ago it remained a deep green, Then it changes quickly over just a few days, and hits us with stunning oranges and yellows. It’s a short show though, and when this one changes colour I know winter is around the corner.
I featured Calvin Vollrath the other day. Now let’s here Manitoba fiddler Patti Lamoureux (Kusturok) along with Sabin Jacques on accordion and Jeremy Rusu on guitar, performing a Quebecois medley.
Enjoy a taste of Calvin Vollrath‘s fiddle music. He’s a fantastic fiddler in the Metis tradition, from Alberta.
I stumbled across videos about Wesley Willis after seeing a couple of his drawings in a folk art auction. I had no idea Mr. Willis was also a musician of sorts. Mr. Willis was born in 1963 and passed in 2003. I don’t know a lot of detail about his life. Apparently he suffered from schizophrenia. He was a visual artist before he was a musician. At one point he fronted a punk bank called the Wesley Willis Fiasco. He liked to sing/shout strange, sometimes obscene lyrics of the auto-accompaniment feature of an electronic keyboard. His music has been referred to as “savant-guard”. There are some documentaries about Mr. Willis on YouTube if you’re interested.
27th Street 